Antony Loewenstein
The Palestine Laboratory
How Israel exports the technology of occupation around the world
“A sad and sordid record of how ‘the light unto the nations’ became the purveyor of the means of violence and brutal repression from Guatemala to Myanmar and wherever else the opportunity arose.”
Scribe Publications, 2023
WINNER OF THE 2023 WALKLEY BOOK AWARD
WINNER OF THE VICTORIAN PREMIER’S LITERARY AWARDS PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD 2024
Bestselling journalist Antony Loewenstein uncovers the widespread commercialisation and brutal deployment globally of Israel’s occupation-enforcing technologies.
For more than 50 years, the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has given the Israeli state invaluable experience in controlling an ‘enemy’ population, the Palestinians. It’s here that they have perfected the architecture of control, using the occupied Palestinian territories as a testing ground for weaponry and surveillance technology that they then export around the world.
The Palestine Laboratory shows in depth and for the first time how Israel has become a leader in developing spying technology and defence hardware that fuels some of the globe’s most brutal conflicts — from the Pegasus software that hacked Jeff Bezos’s and Jamal Khashoggi’s phones, and the weapons sold to the Myanmar army that has murdered thousands of Rohingyas, to the drones being used by the European Union to monitor refugees in the Mediterranean who are left to drown.
In a global investigation that uncovers secret documents, based on revealing interviews and on-the-ground reporting, Antony Loewenstein shows how, as ethno-nationalism grows in the 21st century, Israel has built the ultimate tools for despots and democracies.
About the Author
Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist, bestselling author, filmmaker, and co-founder of Declassified Australia. He’s written for The Guardian, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and many others. His latest book is The Palestine Laboratory: how Israel exports the technology of occupation around the world which won the 2023 Walkley Book Award. His other books include Pills, Powder and Smoke, Disaster Capitalism, and My Israel Question. His documentary films include Disaster Capitalism, and the Al Jazeera English films West Africa’s Opioid Crisis and Under the Cover of Covid. He was based in East Jerusalem 2016–2020.